The Pillow
By the end of the 90s, Currin's controversial approach was gradually becoming accepted within artistic circles. Marrying his wife and muse, the artist Rachel Feinstein in 1997, he swiftly gave up the anxious, frustrated and 'burdened' women of his early oeuvre. Amorous depictions of his wife proliferate through the artist's recent body of work, asserting a new focus on idealised beauty and grace. In The Pillow, Currin's woman has a serene elegance, looking with affection at someone of something in the distance. She replaces Currin's earlier female caricatures with a sumptuous and sensual depiction of a woman.
Created upon a rich golden-brown ground, the artist illuminates the composition through the slow and smooth process of layering lighter hues of coloured paint. It is a skillful simulation of Leonardo da Vinci's signature technique, sfumato that fosters subtle shade and gentle gradations of tone. Traces of the painting's dark base layers abound in the lustrous lapis silk cushion, the delicate bustier of her dress, the warmth of her eyes, in the body of her ochre hair. It is a skillful composition that beautifully captures the mood and atmosphere of the artist's sitter. It is a painting that departs from the artist's early sensational, and politically activated depictions of sexualized womanhood, speaking instead to the elegance and fine detail of 16th century Mannerism. In particular it recalls the serenity and serpentine postures of the Virgin Mary depicted by Parmigianino, Tintoretto and El Greco as well as Titian's luxuriant, reclining nude, Venus of Urbino (1538).
